The Bach Manuscript

Chapter 47

Ben’s cigarette was burned down to its stub. He crushed it on his saucer and lit another. ‘Who else was in the hunt?’

Madison replied, ‘A man called Jürgen Vogelbein, a professor at a Vienna music institute. Vogelbein was much older than Dad. He’d been a soldier in the Battle of Berlin, when the Russians were closing in on the city right at the end of the war. He was part of a special detachment in charge of evacuating art treasures out of Berlin ahead of the Soviet push, and claimed that he actually saw the manuscript being loaded on a truck. He spent years, decades, searching for it after the war, despite being mocked by other academics for believing it even existed. I guess that’s academics for you.’

Ben suddenly remembered Tom McAllister’s mysterious reference to Nazis, the KGB and a man called ‘Bird Leg’. ‘Vogel’ was German for bird, ‘Bein’ for leg. No fool, that McAllister. He’d been figuring a lot of things out from his end.

Ben asked Madison, ‘Did the manuscript by any chance end up in Soviet Russia, in the hands of the KGB?’

She looked at him. ‘Is that just a wild guess, or do you know more about this than you’re letting on?’

‘A little birdie told me. Did it?’

‘The convoy that evacuated the treasures out of Berlin went to Silesia,’ Madison said. ‘That’s a region spread between Poland, Germany and the Czech Republic.’

‘I know where Silesia is. Go on.’

‘Well, the Nazis’ idea was to keep their precious stolen merchandise safely out of enemy hands, but it didn’t quite work out that way for them because pretty soon afterwards the Soviets came swarming in and took over Silesia. Vogelbein believed that the manuscript, along with the rest of the goods, was grabbed by Stalin’s secret police, the NKVD.’

‘Which after the war eventually morphed into the Soviet Committee for State Security, the KGB,’ Ben said. So McAllister had been right. It was a rare thing for Ben to take his hat off to a police detective.

‘Which was as far as Vogelbein was able to track it before he gave up the chase,’ Madison said. ‘As for Dad, he refused to let it go that easily. He kept on kicking at doors for as long as he could, spent fortunes on bribes and offered all kinds of rewards to anyone who could come up with a lead. He had a whole network of contacts, not all of them legal. The most shadowy of all of them was this specialised art and antiquities fence who was rumoured to be Romanian, but nobody had ever met him or knew his real name; guy called himself “Ulysses”.’

‘We’ve heard that name before.’

‘He and Dad did a lot of work together in the past, made a lot of money together. But this time round, nothing doing. The trail was looking deader with every passing year. Meanwhile, Dad met up with Miriam Silbermann several more times in New York, and at her home in Switzerland, reporting his progress to her, probably trying his best to sound optimistic. But even he knew, in his heart, that nobody could ever hope to penetrate the KGB. Once those guys had it, the game was over.’

‘I’m guessing your father didn’t accept that too happily.’

‘No, it broke his spirit. He started drinking around that time, and his relationship with my mom suffered a lot. It’s a wonder I was even conceived.’ Madison managed a small smile. She paused, scratching at the Formica tabletop. ‘On top of everything else, I think he was already in love with Miriam Silbermann, even if he’d never have admitted it to himself at the time.’

‘They had a relationship?’

‘Never. Dad wouldn’t have done that to Mom. But Mom could be a difficult woman, and he wasn’t exactly the most attentive husband, and things were strained between them through most of the marriage. He was captivated by Miriam, talked about her endlessly, even years later. It’s not a big stretch to imagine he had stronger feelings for her. I know he did.’

Madison paused again, and gave a sigh. ‘And so it went on, for sixteen years. Somewhere in the middle of it all, I was born and started growing up. Dad was still travelling about the world, dabbling in other projects, but without much enthusiasm. I sometimes went along with him, and even though I was just a kid I got the taste for it, the travel, the detective work, the hunt.’

‘Except in the end you gravitated towards a slightly different profession, hunting people rather than treasure.’

‘And I’m damn good at my job. Anyway, then 1991 came around. A big year. First, Mom died, within just weeks of her diagnosis. It was a terrible shock. Next major event in our lives, same year, the Soviet Union collapsed. Suddenly, right when he should have been deep in mourning, Dad starts getting as jumpy as a bloodhound on a scent. He’d come back to life. Quit the booze, packed his case, and off he went to pick up the trail. Why? Because he’d had a tip-off from Ulysses that with the USSR falling apart, former KGB agents had been selling off valuables from the state coffers on the sly. Armed with a contact number or two, Dad set sail for Moscow.’

‘And?’

‘And came back almost a month later empty-handed and even more twisted up about it than before.’ Madison shook her head and heaved another deep sigh. ‘And that was pretty much the last we heard about the manuscript. There was no telling what might have happened to it. Even knowing it was locked up in the hands of the KGB was better for Dad than imagining it being sold off to a private collector, or drifting around Christ knew where, or being lost again.

‘But the worst thing of all was having to tell Miriam Silbermann that it was over. He flew to Switzerland to break the bad news to her in person. When he returned, he headed straight for the nearest bar and woke up three days later in Central Park. Never said a word to me about it, but he was never the same again after that. A sixty-one-year-old multimillionaire, and he looked like a hobo twenty years older. He abandoned his career and embarked on his next great project, drinking himself slowly to death. Eventually, the phone stopped ringing. The office sat empty, just the way it is now. I haven’t had the heart to terminate the lease.’

‘Where is your father now?’ Ben asked.

‘He moved to a little beach house on Oahu, Hawaii, eight years ago. My idea. I figured he’d be better off someplace warm. Maybe a mistake, I don’t know. I go to see him when I can — in fact I visited just a couple days ago — but I don’t think he even registers my presence. All he does is sit on his veranda, staring out to sea. I don’t know what he sees, or what goes on inside his mind. I think he’s just waiting for the end. And I guess the end will come, soon enough.’

Ben was silent for a moment as he digested Madison’s sad account and tried to fit all the pieces of the puzzle together in his head.

‘But it’s not the end of the story, is it? While your father was wasting away on his beach and you were off hunting fugitives, the manuscript resurfaced. We’ll never know what journey it made from Moscow, who had it, how many hands it passed through before it popped up in a little backstreet shop in Prague a year ago, and my friend Nick brought it home without even realising what it was. But someone else did.’

Ben told her about Adrian Graves, his scheme to acquire it, the sticky end to which he’d come and the manner by which the manuscript had landed in the possession of the Serbians, first Dragan Vuković and now his lord and master, Zarko Kožul.

‘I think I understand how the rest goes,’ Ben went on. ‘Kožul probably had no interest in the manuscript to begin with, but then he had second thoughts and made a call or two, put the feelers out and realised that maybe it was worth something to him after all, even if he just flogged it off on the cheap. He’s probably got a network of criminal fences ten times bigger than your father ever did, back in the day. And that’s a pretty small world. I think word of the manuscript’s reappearance on the market reached the ears of this man who calls himself Ulysses. Ulysses then contacted your father’s old office in New York and left an urgent message, maybe more than one, to alert him. Which then got relayed to his home in the Hawaiian Islands. Your father might no longer be in touch with reality enough to answer the phone or pick up messages. But it so happened that his devoted daughter was there for a visit, the only other person who knew the story of Rigby Cahill’s quest to find the Bach manuscript.’

Madison arched an eyebrow. ‘Nice work, detective. You’re a real smart guy. A regular Mike Hammer.’

‘You called Ulysses back and convinced him to deal with you personally, on your father’s behalf. Ulysses handed you the connection to Kožul, along with the nightclub address here in Belgrade. You didn’t waste time jumping at the opportunity to finally get back the one thing you believe could make the old man happy again. And here you are.’

‘Here we are, Mr Hammer,’ she corrected him. ‘Question is, what happens now?’

‘What happens now is that you get on the next flight home and forget this,’ Ben said. ‘It’s not worth the risk you’re taking.’

She gave him the fierce frown again. ‘Because I’m a woman? You don’t think I can handle myself in a tough spot?’

‘Tell me something. What exactly were your intentions when you came to Belgrade? To set up a meeting with the charming Mr Kožul and make him a tempting cash offer for the goods?’

‘Negotiate with these scumbags? You must be kidding, right? Even if I had the money, no chance. That’s not how I do business, baby.’

‘That’s what I thought. Which leaves the one and only option of doing it the hard way.’

‘Which I have no problem with at all.’

‘Zarko Kožul isn’t your regular class of murderous lunatic. This is someone who’s most in his element when he’s torturing and butchering large numbers of innocent victims. Ever heard of the Srebrenica massacre?’

Madison said nothing.

‘If you don’t know what his unit did to those people, then keep it that way. You don’t want to know. This is a man who gets his kicks from putting his enemies inside a car crusher and filming them getting squished to death. We’re not talking about serving bail bonds or enforcement of speeding tickets here.’

Madison stiffened like a cobra about to strike. ‘Oh, because I’m not used to dealing with hardcore crooks. Like the jerk last year in Tucson who beat his wife and three kids to death with a hammer and burned their bodies in a pit because she told him he looked like Baxter Burnett. Wasn’t a movie fan, I guess. Or the other psycho dickhead in Nashville who chopped off both a guy’s arms with a chainsaw because he looked at his sister, then blew away three Sheriff’s deputies who came to arrest him. There’s only one reason neither of those slimeballs is gonna taste freedom again, if they live to be a hundred. And you’re looking at her.’ She jabbed her thumb to her chest.

‘Fine,’ Ben said. ‘I have no doubt you can look after yourself. You proved that tonight. So let’s say you did manage to get past an army of Kožul’s men and snatch the manuscript back. Assuming he hasn’t already sold it on by now. Let’s also say you were able to get out of this in one piece and deliver the damn thing to your father on Oahu. What do you think that’s going to change?’

‘I have to believe it will,’ she said. ‘It’s my only chance to bring him back from wherever he is right now.’

‘Even though he’s virtually catatonic? You said yourself, his brain’s gone. He’s hardly more than a vegetable.’

She flinched as though he’d slapped her. ‘Don’t mince words, Ben. Tell me how you really see it.’

‘If my choice of words is brutal,’ Ben said, ‘that’s because I’m trying to make you understand the reality of this situation. As much as I admire your dedication to your poor old father—’

‘Cut the crap,’ she interrupted. ‘Will you help me with what I came here to do, or not?’

‘The answer is no, Madison. I’m not going to help you get yourself killed for nothing. For your father’s sake, as well as your own, go home.’

She shook her head. ‘No way. You’d have to drag me on board that plane inside an iron box with chains around it. Even then, I’d break out and whoop you like a red-headed stepchild.’

‘This is my hunt. I work alone.’

‘We’ve already seen how that went for you.’

‘I’d have got out of it.’

‘Bullshit.’ She fixed him with the steely manhunter stare that he could imagine her giving to some fugitive desperado she’d just nailed, 45-calibre eyes pointing at him. Her face was hard as slate. Then the twitch came to the corner of her mouth, and flickered into a crooked, one-sided smile. The hardness in her eyes gave way to a twinkle of mischief.

‘Besides, I know something else,’ she said. ‘Something I’ll bet my butt you don’t.’ She paused, waiting for a response.

Ben said nothing.

‘Like you said, small world. Ulysses has all the same shady contacts Kožul does.’ She paused again, waiting and watching for his reaction.

‘So?’

‘So Ulysses knows people who have done business with Kožul in the past,’ she said. ‘He might even have done business with him personally, though he might not say so.’ She paused again. Teasing.

‘And?’

‘And it so happens that Ulysses is in on the big, big secret. Closely-guarded information he wouldn’t divulge to a living soul, except maybe to sweet little ol’ Maddie, the daughter of the legendary Rigby Cahill, for old times’ sake.’

Ben was tiring of this game. ‘What secret?’

Madison’s smile twitched wider. She leaned across the table towards him.

‘I know where Kožul lives.’